I thoroughly enjoy reading articles here on PM. Often, I come across an article that is exceptional and wish I could offer two votes instead of one; a way to distinguish it from maybe other articles or responses. I am imagining a four way voting system (i.e. +2, +1, 0, -1). Clearly, such a feature should be limited, i.e. only 20% of vote quota can be used in up-voting by 2 (Maybe there should also be a limit on down-voting?). A quick search of the monastery could not find any similar posts.

I haven't looked or anything, but I'd guess it's been discussed before. My thinking is, if you were allowed to do this it should cost more than the usual vote. Say it costs four votes to upvote something twice and eight votes to upvote something thrice. That might be interesting, but my final answer is: ++/-- is good — don't mess with a good thing without a good reason.

I always find it hard to answer questions if asked to give a value between 0 and 10 were 0 is bad and 10 is good. I just haven't assigned that many levels of distinction between good and bad in my mind for many things. So upvoting something thrice would be, to me, an unnecessary choice. I feel Exceptional (+2), Good (+1), No value (0) and Bad (-1) would cover my spectrum :)

If you still think, some exceptional node is underrated, link to it from your home node to draw attention. If in a current discussion it seems to be worth mentioning what's said in the node, link to it from that related discussion. That should do the rest. It will get more votes from other monks and you can save your own votes =)

The way the system is set up now, in order to garner enough reputation to be considered truly exceptional, articles must appeal to a very broad spectrum of readers, not just a technically-minded subset. I think that is a very important part of the cultural makeup of Perl Monks.

-xdg

Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.

Happy New Year and thank you for all for your opinions. I am a little perplexed that out of 16 votes, 8 were down-votes (that's for the head of this post). Why are people down-voting when an opinion is asked for? Do I sense unnecessary emotion?

It is my experience that (right or wrong) some people tend to upvote PerlMonks Discussion nodes they agree with, and downvote ones they disagree with, almost as if that voting is a way of casting an opinion on the topic, rather than casting a vote on the node's quality. Combine that with the fact that just about any node that discusses the XP and voting system tends to be a magnet for erratic voting, and you're sure to see a few downvotes.

I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you. Go out and celebrate the new year.

You could derive from the votings that proposals for changes to
the voting/XP system are not well received by some monks; the
downvotes could mean disapproval of either the idea of mutiple
votes, or raising the issue at all, or both.

But maybe the node has been downvoted because you have sinned:
You lusted for increasing the importance of your approval
or disapproval statement over someone else's: it would not be the
node that get's distinguished thusly, but your opinion's impact
on it's reputation, visible only to yourself, since the mere sum
of up/downvotes are on display.

A scale of votes, no matter how it's grained (-2..+2 ? -10..+10 ?)
would break the rule that every voter has one vote for a candidate
(a node in this context). It would convert the simple (dis)approval
into a jury type thing (think figure skating), call for a second
number in the reputation's display (number of voters) and probably
for a way to see who did cast how many votes.

Another way to contribute is to get inspired from good articles and contribute something even more profound.
Many monks have been following this practice here. It generates more votes ultimately for good content.

I used to feel the same about this as you do. But as it turns out, I no longer fear to upvote a less great node. Indeed, I can't state thee difference in appreciation from me, but OTOH it turns out that fewer other people will upvote the less great one. So it pans out in the end.

What I like less is that nodes that fewer people have seen, such as more recent nodes in an older thread, consequenctly get fewer votes. Sometimes, the difference is huge. And your proposed solution won't fix that.

I have to say I prefer the system the way it is. I appreciate the sentiment for giving a post more votes (ie. more approval or disapproval), but the way it stands now a vote should be a more considered opinion.

When the voter gets only one chance to vote then the voter presumbably puts a certain amount of thought into what they vote for. If you care about voting then you won't waste your votes. And posts voted up will likely be more worth reading.

Not everything is reputation and XP. Perhaps, after you've ++'d a node, and want to give it that extra nod of approval, send the author a private message thanking them or telling them how much they enjoyed it.

They may not have anything tangible to show for it, but that isn't always what counts the most.

The idea of up and down voting does have it's place in some regards, in that perfect world, but the potential for someone to abuse the down-vote option is quite accessible, and when I read about someone who gets slammed by someone who doesn't like them, it's quite disappointing.

Two Ideas in my mind:

ONE: Has anyone considered removing the down-vote option? Nodes that are worthy, will be up-voted, as deemed, and nodes that should be down-voted, are just left in the dust to languish. That's along the lines of "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything."

TWO: If down-voting is deemed required, mayhaps we only allow members of some of the higher order of monks to down-vote. That could eliminate some of the abuse and create a higher level of merit for placed down-votes.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other